This is from a reliable source:
http://scandichotelbibles.blogspot.com/
After a single complaint by a single secular humanist, the Bible will be purged from thousands of hotel rooms in Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, The Netherlands and Norway.
The Bible will no longer be available at more than 130 Scandic hotels in ten countries.
Scandic has already begun removing the Bible from its rooms.The whole sad process began with a complaint by a guest who had found a Bible in a drawer in his hotel room. He wrote to Mona Andersson, the head marketing executive at Scandic hotels. She wrote back [my translation]:
“Thank you for your e-mail and your views. Yes, we have traditionally had the Bible/New testament available at our hotel rooms. But all religions are welcome at Scandic so as of today we encourage all our hotels to remove the Bible from their rooms. The Bible will be available at the reception as a service for our guests.
Yours sincerely
Mona Andersson
Scandic Marketing”The original text (in Swedish) can be found at http://www.humanisterna.se/huminfo_1_2007.pdf
Isn’t it interesteing what ONE single e-mail can do? One person writes to Scandic hotels to complain that he’s found a Bible in a drawer (oh no!) and whoosh – they’re gone forever. No more Bibles, no more comfort. All in the name of politically correct tolerance.
Mr. Olle Nordahl, Swedish head of the Gideonites, the organization who places free Bibles in hotel rooms all over the world, is devastated.
[my translation:] – We distribute Bibles because we know people are helped by it. People find comfort and support by reading the Bible.
Scandic claims that instead of a Bible in every room they will now have a set of Christian, Jewish and Muslim books available for their customers at the reception. But Mr. Nordahl feels this is not the same:
– It’s the spontaneous reading of the Bible in one’s darkest hour that helps the most. The Bible should be available at your room, not in the reception. Who’d walk down to the reception and wait in line to read the Bible, Mr. Nordahl asks.…and it continues. Please check out this blog here
It’s not in the name of politically correct tolerance, it’s very much for the politically incorrect First Amendment, and it’s to avoid shoving beliefs down people’s throats.
“Scandic claims that instead of a Bible in every room they will now have a set of Christian, Jewish and Muslim books available for their customers at the reception. But Mr. Nordahl feels this is not the same:
– It’s the spontaneous reading of the Bible in one’s darkest hour that helps the most. The Bible should be available at your room, not in the reception.”
Mr. Nordahl perhaps also feels that Judaism and Islam are not necessary. For what it’s worth, I feel none of them, organised Christianity included, are strictly necessary.
If someone is really inclined to read the Bible then they have every right to do so – I would die for their right to do so, sir. But this kind of cheap propaganda is inadmissible, were the book to be the Bible, the Qu’ran, the Torah or even the Origin of Species.
These Bibles are freely given by the Gideons – who want nothing and expect nothing in return – so I don’t think it counts as propaganda.
Three Christian workers in Turkey had their throats cut last week laboring to get this life giving message to their countrymen. So I don’t think it counts as cheap.
respectfully,
Mark
I’m against Islamic terrorism just as much as the next man. Certainly, I come from a country which was devastated because of a deadly mixture of Nazi and Islamic extremism (Yugoslavia).
But it is no excuse to sacrifice personal space and liberties.
It certainly counts as propaganda since in the end, if the Bible message hits home, then the people you remember are, in fact, the Gideons.
The Gideons, like any other religious group, are welcome to canvass in public spaces next to each other, as long as reception of their message is entirely optional. By placing a Bible in a hotel room, you’re forcing it into people’s consciousness by force.
Actually, I would prefer if every religion’s books were available, rather than none. On rare occasions I have found hotels that, in addition to Gideon Bibles, stocked translations of the Quran and the Teachings of Buddha.
I think it’s a good idea to just forget that some people claim The Bible to be the word of God. Imagine a hotel is leaving a book in each room that covers the following topics.
1) The condemnation of homosexuals as abominations
2) Denegration of women, branding them as unclean and not to be touched
3) Advice on how to manage your slaves
4) Incest, rape, murder and dismemberment
Does that sound like good business? Is it a good way to welcome your guests?
If I book in to a hotel room and want to read the bible or watch the animal porn channel, it makes sense that it’s something I should opt in to. I don’t want to send my kids ahead up to the room, wander up after them and find them watching the TV with a very shocked expression.
If people want to read The Bible, surely a trip to reception isn’t too much to ask for someone wanting to read the words of God?
Sean,
You are mistaken about the message of the Bible which is summed up in these two commands:
Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and with with all your mind and with all your strength.
and
Love your neighbor as yourself (Mark 12:29-31)
There is no condemnation of homosexuals. Jesus says:
God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him (John 3:17) The message of the Bible is not one of condemnation, but one of salvation.
Women are not denegrated in the Bible. It states plainly that there is no distinction:
There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, NEITHER MALE OR FEMALE, for you are all one in Christ. (Galatians 3:28)
Women played a prominent role in Jesus’s ministry. They were the first ones to see him after he rose from the dead. Women played a prominent role in the leadership of the early church as apostles and deaconesses.
Slavery, obviously a bad idea, was part of the culture the Bible was written in. The advice in the Bible is sound in the sense that slaves were to seek freedom if possible, and masters were to be kind to their slaves. If we are to love people like ourselves it would make sense that we would not enslave them or mistreat them in any way.
There is incest, rape, murder and dismemberment in the Bible. It is never encouraged.
I think you are missing the Love message of the Bible – and unfortunately you are not the only one.
-Mark
Mark, I’ll begin with a quote as you did. This is the message of The Bible that I get when I read it.
“I will sweep away everything in all your land,” says the LORD. “I will sweep away both people and animals alike. Even the birds of the air and the fish in the sea will die. I will reduce the wicked to heaps of rubble, along with the rest of humanity,” says the LORD. “I will crush Judah and Jerusalem with my fist and destroy every last trace of their Baal worship. I will put an end to all the idolatrous priests, so that even the memory of them will disappear. For they go up to their roofs and bow to the sun, moon, and stars. They claim to follow the LORD, but then they worship Molech, too. So now I will destroy them! And I will destroy those who used to worship me but now no longer do. They no longer ask for the LORD’s guidance or seek my blessings.” Zephaniah 1:2-6
I think you are reading the loving messages and ignoring the nastier aspects of The Bible and God. I suspect though that you’re ignoring the Old Testament in particular.
Homosexuals are indeed condemned. See Leviticus and also this text from Romans.
“For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another”
I think describing it as being vile and against nature makes the Christian position pretty clear – this is in the canon after all.
Women definitely get better treatment from the New Testament, but they have a terrible time in the Old Testament. There are an insane number of references to women being unclean and subservient to man (who in turn reports to Jesus). Women are not allowed to teach men, nor are they allowed to uncover their heads in church. You must have no physical contact with a menstruating woman.
Although there were women involved in the early church, it’s curious that Jesus chose none to be his disciple.
Regarding the Bible being part of the culture it was written in, are you saying that it’s not the word of God? I know that slavery isn’t a clear-cut thing, and that definitions of it vary, but providing guidelines for slavery seems a bit odd when God could have simply said “don’t keep slaves”.
The thing is, if we accept that The Bible is influenced by the culture (or time) from which it came, it loses a great deal of its magical power since it really then becomes just another book written by men.
Murder is most certainly encouraged – the military exploits of the Israelites are an exercise in genocide. The kidnapping of women from the defeated peoples would also seem to be endorsed by the fact that God never punishes his people for that.
The book of Zephaniah also says
Sing, O Daughters of Zion;
Shout aloud, O Israel!
Be glad and rejoice with all your heart,
O Daughter of Jerusalem!
The Lord has taken away your punishment,
he has turned back your enemy.
The LORD, the King of Israel is with you;
never again will you fear any harm.
On that day they will say to Jerusalem,
“Do not fear, O Zion;
do not let your hands hang limp.
The LORD your God is with you,
He is mighty to save.
He will take great delight in you,
he will quiet you with his love,
he will rejoice over you with singing.
Zeph 3:15-17
These verses are meaningful to me. I am a sinner, deserving of the judgement that you quoted in chapter one, but he has “taken away my punishment”. The king of my Jewish ancestors has come powerfully to save me. He is mighty to save.
Romans is a fantastic book that sums up the theology of the Christian faith – but it is important to look at it in context – you should keep on reading into chapter 2 where Paul continues his argument that *all have sinned”, Jew and Gentile, homosexual or straight, and *all need Jesus Christ”.
You therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgement on someone else for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgement do the same things. Romans 2.
Jesus hated the pharisees and hung out with the prostitutes. It was a prostitute who saw him first after he raised from the dead. Why? Because the pharisees were hypocrites. Many evangelical leaders and TV preachers are hypocrites today. But the sinners know they are sick, so they were attracted to Jesus. The pharisees were not attracted to Jesus. They did not think they needed a Savior. Only religion. They were and are wrong.
Women are complicated. I grew up in a tradition which did not believe in women leadership – now I go to a church where most of the leadership is women. Sigh. If you look at the New testament – a lot of the leadership is women. Paul is always commending them and saying hi to these women leaders. There are these verses that say that “women are saved through child birth” and that women should not teach. Paul is trying to maintain order in the churches. The churches were taking their freedom and their priesthood of all believers a little too far, so immature Christians were saying foolish things in an authoritative way during church services. Since spiritually immature women have a tendency to talk more than spiritually immature men he singled them out. Paul did not like people, or respect people very much, who disagreed with him theologically. In Galatians he told men who taught differently about the circumcision to emasculate themselves. He doesn’t go that far with the women.
God could have said “don’t keep slaves” but that would not have solved the problem for slaves with unbelieving masters who were coming to Christ. It was more strategic for the advancement of the gospel to work inside the the culture rather than possibly be considered a “slave revolt movement”. I am sure that He told a lot of slave owners privately to not keep slaves. Slavery is bad and human trafficking is still happening today – even in suburban America.
God is both Just and Loving.
-Mark